Industry Group Forms to Advance Healthcare Sustainability

Although, this is largely a fcilities initiative, it will no doubt impact the medical product supply chain.

Inova Health System announced that it has joined six other major hospital systems in the Healthier Hospital Initiative (HHI), a collaborative of leading health care institutions united to help speed the health care sector toward environmental sustainability. Inova Health System joins the six hospital systems—Advocate Health Care, Catholic Healthcare West, Hospital Corporation of America, Kaiser Permanente, MedStar Health, and Partners Healthcare—along with Practice Greenhealth, Health Care Without Harm and the Center for Health Design, that formed the Healthier Hospitals Initiative in May 2010. These leading hospital systems are partnering with the other organizations to provide expertise and technical assistance and programs to help hospitals carry out the HHI Agenda.

The HHI Sustainability Agenda utilizes evidence-based design and research data on environmental sustainability and community health to delineate a prioritized roadmap; it is a method for moving from good ideas implemented by individual facilities to a comprehensive system and sector-wide adoption of sustainable practices and cost reduction. The HHI Agenda is based on the premise that a coordinated sector-wide approach to learn from each other as we re-invent how we design, build and operate hospitals can improve patient outcomes and workplace safety, prevent illnesses, create extraordinary environmental benefits, and save billions of dollars.

Read more in the Health Care Without Harm Press Release

See what else Health Care Without Harm is doing at NoHarm.org

WM, Johnson & Johnson, Dupont Tackle Medical Waste Recycling

 

Rhode Island has taken a step toward requiring manufacturers to deal with the disposal of their products....The new Healthcare Plastics Recycling Council (HPRC) includes companies that represent the entire supply chain of the medical products industry, including Du Pont, Kimberly-Clark, Johnson & Johnson, and Waste Management.This collaborative effort will explore the development of more sustainable health care products, less wasteful packaging, and an increase in plastics for medical use. The companies, which also include BD Biosciences, Cardinal Health, Epi Recycling Solutions, and Hospira, will work to identify barriers to the recycling of plastics and find targeted solutions throughout the medical products supply chain...

Read more at the Triple Pundit